CNN
–

This summer, the Earth is spinning faster, making the days slightly shorter, attracting the attention of scientists and timekeepers.

July 10 was the shortest day ever, under 24 hours, under 1.36 milliseconds, according to data from the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service and the US Navy Observatory compiled by Timeanddate.com. Furthermore, very short days are coming on July 22nd and August 5th. It is currently forecast to be 1.34 and 1.25 msec shorter than the 24 hours, respectively.

The length of the day is the time it takes for a planet to complete one full rotation on the axis – 24 hours or an average of 86,400 seconds. However, in reality, each rotation is slightly irregular due to a variety of factors, including the gravitational pull of the moon, seasonal changes in the atmosphere, and the effects of the Earth’s liquid core. As a result, a full spin usually takes just a little or just a little 86,400 seconds. This is a millisecond inconsistency that does not have a clear impact on everyday life.

However, these inconsistencies can affect computers, satellites and communications in the long run. Therefore, even the smallest deviations are tracked using an atomic clock introduced in 1955.

Atomic clocks count the vibrations of atoms held in the vacuum chamber within the clock itself, and calculate 24 hours with maximum accuracy. Calls the result time UTC or adjusted universal time. This is based on about 450 atomic clocks, and is the global standard for timekeeping, the time when all mobile phones and computers are set.

Astronomers can also use satellites that check the location of planets compared to fixed stars, for example, to track the rotation of the Earth and detect the small difference between the time of the atomic clock and the time it actually takes for the Earth to complete its full rotation. Last year, on July 5, 2024, Earth experienced the shortest day recorded in less than 24 hours in 1.66 msec since the atomic clocks appeared 65 years ago.

“We’ve been heading for a slightly faster day since 1972,” said Duncan Agnew, professor emeritus of geophysics at the Oceanographic Institute and research geophysicist at the University of California, San Diego. “But there’s fluctuations. It’s like looking at the stock market. There’s a long-term trend, then there’s a peak and a fall.”

In 1972, after decades of rotation rotated relatively slowly, Earth’s spin accumulated such delays compared to atomic time, requiring international Earth’s rotation and reference system services to add a “second” to UTC. This adds an extra day to February every four years to explain the contradictions of the Gregorian calendar and the time it takes to complete one orbit around the sun.

Since 1972, UTC has added a total of 27 jump seconds, but the additional speed has been slower and slower due to the Earth’s speedup. Nine leap seconds were added throughout the 1970s, but no new leap seconds have been added since 2016.

In 2022, the General Assembly on Weight and Major (CGPM) voted to retire from the second jump by 2035. This means that nothing else will be added to the watch. However, according to Agnew, if the Earth continues to rotate faster for several more years, it may eventually need to remove a second from UTC. “There were no negative leaps,” he said.

Agnew said the shortest change in Earth’s rotation comes from the moon and tide. This will allow the satellite to rotate faster when it is above the equator and faster when it is at altitude or at a lower altitude. This effect is exacerbated with the fact that it naturally rotates faster during the summer Earth. This is the result of the atmosphere itself slowing down due to seasonal changes, such as jetstreams moving north or south. The laws of physics indicate that the rotational speed lost by the atmosphere is picked up by the planet itself, as the Earth’s overall angular momentum and its atmosphere must remain constant. Similarly, for the past 50 years, the Earth’s liquid core has also slowed down, with the solid Earth around it getting faster.

By looking at the combination of these effects, scientists can predict whether the next day will be particularly short. “These fluctuations have a short correlation: if the Earth is speeding up on one day, it tends to speed up the next day,” said Judas Levine, a fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the division of time and frequency. “But that correlation disappears when spaced longer and longer. And once you reach a year, forecasts become very uncertain. In fact, international Earth rotation and reference system services are less predicted in advance than in a year.”

One short day makes no difference, but the recent trends on short days have increased the second most negative leap. “When the Leap second system was defined in 1972, no one really thought that a negative second would happen,” he pointed out. “It was just a standard because you had to do it for integrity. Everyone thought that only positive jump seconds were needed, but now they’re at risk of a shortening of sunrise (negative jump seconds).”

The outlook for a negative jump raises concerns as there are still issues with positive jump issues in 50 years, Levine explained. “There are places where you do the wrong thing, do it at the wrong time, make the wrong number, etc. And it repeats two seconds ago, this has been done over and over again.

So many basic technology systems are perfect for Y2K problems as they rely on clock and time, including the emergence of negative leap similar to Y2K problems, such as telecommunications, financial transactions, electrical grids, GPS satellites, and more, to name a few. From ’99’ to ’00.

Climate change is also a contributing factor to the jumping issue, but it is an incredible way. Global warming has had a major negative impact on the planet, but when it comes to our timekeeping, it helped us counter the forces that are accelerating the Earth’s spin. Agnew, published last year by Agnew, detailed in Nature Nature that ice melting in Antarctica and Greenland spreads across the ocean, slowing the Earth’s rotation.

“If that ice wasn’t melting, if there wasn’t global warming, it would be very close to having already jumping and leaping,” Agnew said. According to NASA, Meltwater from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets is responsible for a third of global sea level rise since 1993.

This mass shift in melted ice causes changes not only to the rotational speed of the Earth, but also to its axis of rotation, according to a study led by Benedict Soja, an assistant professor at the Federal Institute of Technology in Switzerland. If global warming continues, its effects can dominate. “By the end of this century, in a pessimistic scenario (humans continue to release more greenhouse gases) The effects of climate change could outweigh the effects of the moon that have actually driven the Earth’s rotation over the last hundreds of millions of years,” Soja said.

At this point, given the uncertainty of long-term predictions about Earth’s spinning behavior, it could lead to more time to prepare for action. “I think (faster spins) are still within reasonable boundaries, so that might be natural variation,” Soja said. “Maybe after a few years, I could see another situation again, and in the long run, I could see the planet slowing down again. That’s my intuition, but you’ll never know.”

Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory Science Newsletter. Explore the universe with news about fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.

Albany, Georgia
KFF Health News
–

Belinda Macroid is thinking about peanut butter.

The 64-year-old Macroid receives small monthly payments through the Federal Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program, previously known as Food Stamps.

“They don’t give you much to work with,” she said. To fit her tight budget, she eats ramen noodles that are rich in sodium and less nutritious multiple times a week.

If she had more money, Macroid, diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and heart problems, said she would buy more grapes, melon, chuck roast, ground turkey, cabbage and turnip greens. That’s what she did when lawmakers almost doubled the profits of her snaps during the pandemic.

But now, the GOP-led council has approved cuts in its food assistance program throughout 2034. Macroid, who worked in retail until her retirement in 2016, is unsure how she will be able to eat healthy foods if her profits drop again.

Macroid said the only hope for a healthy diet is to rely on peanut butter.

“I can get anything,” said Macroyd, who uses walkers who roam the senior community in southwestern Georgia. “I’m trying to eat a healthy diet, but I don’t have enough money to take care of it, so there are a few things I can’t do.”

The second Trump administration says healthy eating is a priority. It said “again, American health,” which cites poor diet as a cause of childhood illnesses and chronic illnesses. And states, including Arkansas, Idaho and Utah, are allowing federal snap benefits to restrict the purchase of unhealthy foods for the first time in the history of anti-hanger programs a century ago.

President Donald Trump also signed the Tax and Expense Act on July 4, shifting costs into states and expanding existing labor requirements makes it even more difficult for people to qualify for SNAP. The bill cuts around 20% of Snap’s budget, making it the deepest cut that the program faces. Currently, around 40 million people are receiving SNAP payments, while 3 million people have lost their nutritional supplements completely, and millions can reduce their profits.

Researchers say snap cuts counter efforts to help prevent chronic diseases through healthy foods.

“We’ve seen a lot of people who have had a lot of trouble with their health,” said Kate Bauer, an associate professor of nutrition science at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.

“It’s like, ‘Oh, we’re interested in health, but for the rich,” she said.

According to the US Department of Agriculture, in 2023, around 47 million people lived in households with limited or uncertain access to food in 2023. Research from the institution shows that people living in food-affected households are more likely to develop hypertension, arthritis, diabetes, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

The Trump administration retorts that cuts in funding would not hurt those receiving benefits.

“This is totally horrifying,” White House spokesman Anna Kelly said in an email. “The bill will enhance the snap of those who ultimately need it by implementing cost-sharing measures using state and common sense labor requirements.”

Macroids and other residents of Dougherty County, Georgia, where Albany is located, already face a sudden barrier to accessing healthy foods.

More than a third of residents receive snap benefits in the majority of black counties in the countryside, which Web Du Bois described as “the heart of the black belt” and “a place of hope and pain that is mysteriously mixed together.”

Terrell said a healthier diet can alleviate many of the illnesses she sees in her community. In 2017, she replaced school bus seats with shelves with fruit, vegetables, meat and eggs, and took her mobile grocery store to senior communities, public housing developments and rural areas.

However, reducing food aid will devastate the area and retreat efforts to help residents boost their diet with fruits, vegetables and other nutritious foods and tackle chronic illnesses, she said.

Terrell saw how recipients of snaps like Macroid ate healthy when food aid rose during the pandemic. They got eggs instead of canned sausages, instead of ramen noodles, and fresh meat and produce.

From 2020, SNAP recipients have received additional pandemic support, according to the Northwestern University Policy Research Institute. According to a survey published in Health Affairs in October, when these payments ended in 2023, more families struggled to buy enough food. In particular, non-Hispanic black families have been studied to have seen an increase in anxiety.

Regarding budget policies and priorities, Katie Berg, senior policy analyst for the Food Aid Team, said: Cut into snaps and say, “Place healthy foods out of reach of these families.”

The Trump administration said it is boosting healthy eating for low-income Americans by limiting what they can buy with the benefits of snaps. We have begun approval of state requests to limit the purchase of soda and candy with the benefits of snaps.

“I would like to thank the governors of Indiana, Arkansas, Idaho, Utah, Iowa and Nebraska. I would like to thank the bold leadership and unwavering commitment to bringing America healthy again.” “I am urging all governors across the country to submit snap exemptions to eliminate sweet drinks. Taxpayer dollars should never have bankroll products that promote the epidemic of chronic diseases.”

The state has called for such restrictions in the past, but never approved previous administrations, including the first Trump administration.

Research shows that programs that encourage people to buy healthy foods are more effective than regulating what they can buy. Such restrictions increase family stigma that is burdensome for retailers and are often difficult to implement, researchers say.

“People make incredibly tough choices to survive,” said Gina Platanino, deputy director of Snap at the Food Research and Action Center, a nonprofit advocacy group and former senior policy advisor to the Biden administration.

“It’s not about soda and candy,” she said. “It’s about access.”

Terrell said he doesn’t know how people will survive if the benefits of food are further organized.

“What do people think they’re going to do?” said Terrell, a grocery store with a better way to open a bustling community market in downtown Albany last year selling fresh juices, smoothies and wellness shots. “We’ll have you choose between food and bills.”

That applies to 22-year-old Stephen Harrison. Stephen Harrison, 22, along with his parents and younger brother, is supported by a monthly snap benefit. During the pandemic, he used extra support to buy strawberries and grapes, but now he’s a better way to buy oranges as much as possible.

Harrison, a student of the culinary arts at Albany Technical College, carefully states his family’s budget to buy meals like cornbread and collard greens and pork chops, but he says that if his profits are cut, the family will have to resort to cheap food.

“I’ll buy a hot dog,” he said with a shrug.

KFF Health News It is a newsroom nationwide that creates deep journalism on health issues and is one of the core operating programs at the country. KFF – Independent sources of health policy research, voting and journalism.